Zapa Player
Your list isn't broken. Your player is.
Zapa Player doesn't sell you channels. It handles the hard part: making what you already pay for actually play, and keep playing when the provider stutters, switches resolution, or gives you a single connection.
Phone, tablet and Android TV.
Currently in closed testing.
What breaks isn't the list
It's everything between the list and the screen. An IPTV panel doesn't serve like a streaming service: it serves in bursts, goes quiet for a few seconds, and comes back. Most players give up at the first gap and leave you staring at a frozen frame with a spinner on top.
Zapa Player is built around that fact, not in spite of it.
Rides out the gap — and reconnects when it has to
When the stream goes quiet, it doesn't give up: it waits and carries on. If the channel switches resolution mid-stream and the picture freezes, it asks for it again. And if the drop is real, it reconnects on its own, counting attempts so it never spins in a loop.
You see a flicker. On another player you'd see a frozen frame and a spinner.
Zapping by remote, not by menu
Up and down change channel in full screen, without going back to any list. OK opens the zap browser over the video, with groups and channels, and what's on right now in each one.
Closes one before opening the next
If your service only allows one connection — and nearly every cheap one does — changing channel without closing the previous stream is a guaranteed error. Zapa closes it first. It sounds obvious; almost nobody does it.
The guide your provider doesn't give you
Most channels arrive with no schedule at all: the row shows a name and nothing else. Zapa completes the grid from open sources and stitches it to your catalogue by channel name.
And it does it on your own device. There's no server of ours in the middle, which is why this can't go down and can never turn into a fee for keeping it alive.
To the TV, no cable and no account
Send any channel to the Chromecast at home from your phone, and keep zapping from your hand while it plays on the big screen.
The video goes from your service to your phone and from your phone to the TV, over your own wi-fi. It passes through no server of ours, and carries enough buffer that a provider stumble never reaches the living room.
Everything else it does
A complete player, not a demo with half the buttons greyed out.
Record what you're watching
One key, while it's running. Or half an hour, or two, or scheduled for the day and time you want.
Programme reminders
“Tell me when it starts” — and the reminder still fires even if you rebooted the device in between.
Floating window
The live channel keeps going in a corner while you use something else, with previous, next and pause at hand.
Playing with the screen off
For talk shows and radio-on-television, where pixels and battery are wasted.
Films and series done properly
Seasons and episodes, with a seek bar that responds even on panels that answer range requests badly.
Subtitles and audio tracks
Original or dubbed, with subtitles or without, chosen from the video itself.
Picks up where you left off
Recently watched, your favourites and the channel search, always a couple of presses away.
Several lists at once
Switch from one to another without retyping anything, and without losing the favourites of either.
Same app on the TV and the phone
Phone, tablet and Android TV. The interface adapts to a remote or a fingertip — it isn't the phone one stretched.
Search programmes, not just channels
Type a title and it tells you which channel it's on and at what time, across the coming days.
Your list, your way
Hide the categories you'll never watch and put the ones you will up front. With a big list that's the first thing you need.
Doesn't take a minute to start
A series asks for its episodes when you open it, not at launch. The list paints instantly, however big it is.
And what it doesn't carry
Half the category makes its money selling you while showing you your own list. There's none of that here — not out of virtue, but because there's nowhere to put it.
- Not one ad. None, anywhere, in any version.
- No analytics, no trackers. No measurement, no advertising identifiers, no third parties watching what you play.
- No sign-up, no account. It opens and works. You never give an email address.
- No servers of ours. Your credentials are encrypted against the device's own keystore and never leave it. There is nowhere to send them to.
Zapa Player does not include channels. No lists, no subscriptions, no catalogue. It opens empty.
It works with the Xtream Codes service you already pay for: you enter the address, the username and the password, and that's it. If you don't have one, this app is of no use to you — and we'd rather say so here than afterwards.
Zapa Player is a playback tool. It does not include, host or distribute audiovisual content of any kind. What you see depends entirely on the service each person configures, and it is that person's responsibility that the service they use is legitimate.